Top Floating message box using jQuery

Last time, I’ve shown you how to create a alert box using jQuery. This time, I’ve come up with another tutorial to show you how to display floating message box in the top of the browser using jQuery. The message box always get displayed at the top of the browser although you move across the document with help of scroll bar. Now, let’s kick out this tutorial for creating floating message box using jQuery.

HTML code for floating message box using jQuery

<div id="message_box">
    <img id="close_message" style="float:right;cursor:pointer" src="12-em-cross.png" />
    The floating message goes here
</div>

<div>
  ..............
  other content goes here
  ..................
</div>

The message box which is going to float in the top of the browser is inside the div with id “message-box” and this div is defined with the class “cornerbox”. And the small image with id “close_message” to close the message box and is displayed in the right hand side by setting the float attribute of CSS to right .

CSS code for floating message box using jQuery

#message_box {
position: absolute;
top: 0; left: 0;
z-index: 10;
background:#ffc;
padding:5px;
border:1px solid #CCCCCC;
text-align:center;
font-weight:bold;
width:99%;
}

You can see that CSS code for the floating message box is straightforward and you can change the color , size etc. according to your choice. But keep in mind that, “position” property must be absolute so that this message box doesn’t distract the other boxes and “z-index” must be set higher so that the it overlaps the other content of the web page.

jQuery code for floating message box

<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="jquery-1.2.6.min.js"></script>

You must notice that I’ve used jquery 1.2.6 in this example as dimension plugin of jquery is embedded in the this version of jQuery. If you use the lesser version of jQuery than 1.2.6 then must use the dimension plugin of jQuery to use this example.

//scroll the message box to the top offset of browser's scrool bar
$(window).scroll(function()
{
  $('#message_box').animate({top:$(window).scrollTop()+"px" },{queue: false, duration: 350});
});

As you can when the window gets scrolled this function is called and the box gets moved as the “top” property of message box is set to different pixel using scrollTop() function, which had been the part dimension plugin of jQuery. This function return the scroll top offset of the matched element and in our example this return the scroll top offeset of the browser’s window. Another thing you must notice in the animate function that queue is set to false which makes the animation to skip the queue and begins running immediately otherwise the animation may stuck in the queue and looks ugly.

//when the close button at right corner of the message box is clicked
$('#close_message').click(function()
{
  //the messagebox gets scrool down with top property and gets hidden with zero opacity
  $('#message_box').animate({ top:"+=15px",opacity:0 }, "slow");
});

It is the simple animation when the image with close sign is clicked, the message box slides down below and gets hidden because its opacity set to zero in the animation function.